coc_bostonfandomcom-20200214-history
Session 06
Game date March 26, 2011 Game notes +5 XP for last session. Game log May 1st Last session, there was copious sabotage, but the guilty party, the ship's steward Henning, was captured. The party is about a day from reaching São Paulo. Owen asks Starkweather about interrogating the prisoner, and Starkweather mentions that he and the captain interrogated the guy last night. He doesn't know why he went after the expedition, but he seems to have a grudge against Starkweather for some reason. Since he's part of the crew, he's under the captain's jurisdiction. Starkweather is pretty sure that the issue is wrapped up; he knew it couldn't have been one of the party. Owen tries pushing Starkweather's button of letting the captain be in charge, but he says that he doesn't have a way of getting the guy out to talk to, as the captain and first mate have the keys. Owen gives up eventually. May 2nd Land ho! São Paolo. Starkweather gathers everyone together for instructions. The supplies will be offloaded by tomorrow. Lodgings will be secured. Most of the party will go by train to Corumbá. The flight crew will stay here; a warehouse at the airfield will keep the supplies that are left behind, and they'll keep the radios as contact for the outside world. People must leave behind everything they don't need for survival; the weight will be burdensome enough without it. There will be another meeting tomorrow. Dr. Russel goes into port for some rum to carry in a water skin and offers to bring some people with him to offer translator services. Some guides and the group's linguist go into town, too. Some replacement supplies need to be found: jerky, photo supplies, quinine, and so forth. May 3rd At mess, Starkweather has the addresses of where everyone is staying and the train tickets for tomorrow. Moore asks several of the party to keep an eye on people taking our supplies over to the trains and to the airfield. Matheson heads off to the airfield to watch the equipment, along with a short manifest of what's being left behind for backup at the base camp. While sorting through the ammunition, he finds Lynch's hidden explosives cache. Since Lynch had mentioned explosives before and had searched the crates, Matheson checks with him. He convinces Matheson to not mention it to Starkweather and Moore. Starkweather delivers another address at the evening meal. The travellers will be travelling by train to Corumbá, by boat to Cuiabá, by foot to Bakairí post, which is a native village with the last vestiges of the Brazilian government. There, the party will get new guides, then will north into the wilderness before turning east in Pará near the conjunction of the San Miguel and San Francisco rivers (based on coordinates from Fawcett and the previous expedition). * The duties of hauling the sleds will be shared by everyone. Guides will hack away at vegetation in front. The first few days will be difficult as people get adjusted to the weight, heat, and humidity. * Starkweather thinks this should be a straightforward expedition. We have Dr. Green and his assistant Curtis Anthony to take care of us. * We will set up camp for the planes to resupply once we find the ancient city and the plateau. * Get on the train at 8 AM. * Dr. Russel goes off to talk to local anthropologists about the local peoples. Most of the expertise is with Caribbean languages that have been influenced by exposure to Europe through the Caribbean islands. The more acclimated tribes use some Portuguese or pidgin. Most first contact has been confrontational, and there's bad blood over the rubber boom and a lot of regrettable things that took place during the 1900-1910s. If a tribe is going to be violent, they'll be on you before you notice them. ** Dr. Russel gets copies of some linguistic books. May 4th * The train ride is a couple of hundred miles and takes about a week. There's a lot of rain during the trip and nothing much to do. Several very poor natives on the train of all mixtures of native/European/Caribbean racial backgrounds. ** Not really much to do. Owen's got cards, but he plays for money. May 8th We arrive in Corumbá. It's a poor rural town of about 10K-12K people. The hotel we stay at can barely accommodate us at 2 per room and has vermin issues. Unfortunately, we can't move everyone by boat and our equipment in one trip, so we're splitting up into to trips. Guides and camp followers will go with Starkweather in the first wave. Scientists and the rest will come in the second. It'll take about a week for the first boat to make its round trip. May 22nd * Owen and Luo go with the first group of 16, which arrives in Cuiabá on this date. It's a town of about 2000 with a much smaller official Brazilian presence. Starkweather sets the team to setting up the sleds and divvies up the gear. Owen hides his explosives. People have to camp in the woods or find limited shelter in buildings with open space. * Owen spends his time gambling, cheating, and getting run out of places. * Luo spends time looking for people with strange auras and finding nothing. He also finds some people trading odd figurines like the ones in the diary. * On the seventh day, Luo's sight picks out a group of people that stand out. They have some sort of possession or strong otherworldly ties. They are natives of some sort. One is wearing some sort of feathered bib/dickie. They seem to be trading for leather goods. * The possession seems more of a passenger. They might not even know it. * Luo tries asking Moore about them, but he isn't all that interested in them and brushes it off when Owen chips in that Luo thinks they've got a supernatural taint to them. * He enlists the Sorenson twins, George and Neal, to help ask the locals about them. They are two stocky, blond haired, blue eyed guys with accents of indeterminable origin. * They cut straight to the chase and ask the four men directly where they are from. The conversation seems mostly neutral in tone. The Sorensons are amiable, and the tribesmen are formal. There seems to be some kind of gift exchange. What the tribesmen give them is some sort of items of great power but diffused and not focused as far as Luo's aura sight shows. ** They are from the Tabana tribe, east of here. ** The items are a small, green stone icon similar to the objects we've seen before with fish/snake/insectoid overtones. They claim its a protective charm. Luo knows (via Occult) that many tribes use an item like this as a fetish to call for protection from an animal spirit. This one is pretty complex, though. It could be calling for protection from each of the types of animals that it's made up of. It could also be used in rituals as a general symbol of protection or affinity. Meanwhile.... * Clayton and Thomas leave on the 15th and arrive on the 29th with the remaining 26. ** Martin Kleiser is the dedicated linguist with Conrad Felgener as his assistant. Dr. Russel puts together a team to study and prepare for talking to the natives. There are more classes on survival, first aid, linguistics, etc. ** Clayton spots a few people wearing the relics he saw at the university and in the journals. Though not a people watcher, Thomas notices three distinct groups / systems in the city: normal people, and two different groups that wear the green or the pink relics. They interact with the normals but not with each other -- ever. * Clayton asks a white woman about the pink trinket. She found it in the market. He follows down that lead. Two vendors sell ten of each type. He looks into the green ones first. Kakuaru?, Kokopelli, Nahukua (in the NE) all use crop protection and fertility and good luck charm. It's considered a powerful force for good in your personal life. ** Joan, when shown the items, notes that S.P.F. brought back several of the green ones. She wasn't familiar with the pink ones. ** Asking some of the natives in our group. They only appeared in the past year, trickling down from elsewhere. No idea who makes them or what they are. * Eventually, we take the trip too. May 29th * We each have our own packs. About 60 lbs. each with food, bedrolls, etc., and some of our equipment. * Several members of the Macu tribe will accompany us. * Luo talks to Clayton about the tribesmen (but not the mojo) and how the Sorensons were given some of the green idols. ** Checking on a green idol vendor: The Tabana, Suiás, and Nahukua trade the green ones probably from further in. The vendor claims that they are good protection from fever, jaguars, etc. In Portuguese, they are called talisman. No one knows what they are made of. ** The pink salesman calls them protection from snakes, vampire bats, etc. He says that the tribes who trade the pink ones are Afasukugu, Echoga, and Guarayos. No real info on where they live. They just call them icons. ** Note that the pink ones are a mix of bird, jaguar, and tree. Session 3 is fixed. Also note that each one is more of a face than a figurine. ** Clayton picks up another pair of icons and then starts legwork on finding out where the tribes that trade them come from. Mostly the people who come in trading these are from within 100 miles to the N, NE, to E arc. No solid pattern separating the two. May 30th * Starkweather introduces our native guides, the Macu. (They carry spears.) They will help us drag the sleds too. Owen takes first shift on dragging the sleds. Luo and Clayton have to make checks for dealing with load. Luo has a pretty rough day, and he stumbles and falls behind a bit, getting reamed out and replaced. ** Evie's player isn't here, so we don't know how she does, but Joan doesn't get a turn at the sled and has a noticeably lighter pack. * First night, everyone is exhausted. It's the first night to set up camp as Starkweather has envisioned. It's a bizarre network of pipes sticking out of the ground with a net to cover the entire camp. We've been assaulted by mosquitoes & bees the whole time, and we have no idea how to get the ones already attacking us out. Guides come to fix our tents. * One problem with the common netting idea is that setting a fire in the middle will risk charring the netting above. Thomas comes up with the idea to build an inner "doughnut hole" in the structure to put the fire outside of the netting. * We have a meal of jerky, soup, and tea. We then all have to roll to see how well we sleep with all the background noise. Luo, Thomas, and several other members have trouble sleeping. May 31st * Another day. More sledding, slashing, and trekking. ** Basically, we can carry our Body in weight without having to roll. Luo and Clayton will have to make rolls everyday to avoid falling behind. * Same camping set up. Same rolls to sleep. All the PCs make it. Time Passes * It will take 2-3 weeks to get to Bakairí post. Luo and Clayton make a huge long list of rolls of on Body (and Endurance for Luo) with about half and half success. ** Clayton has to make a Soul roll for his failures, fails it, and takes a failure on the new "special" stress track of unknown and dubious province. Since he has no idea what is happening to him, he doesn't get an opportunity for madness track first aid. * We all then make a string of checks for sleeping. Thomas has 3 bad nights. Owen has about 6 (with one matched failure). Owen fails on his Soul roll on the mystery track. * People start getting ill after the first week. Mostly in the scientific, mechanical, and journalistic crew. Luo starts getting a fever; he finds that he has some sort of blood poisoning from all the flesh-eating insects. Many of the other people have sores, fevers, and infected abrasions on them. * Starkweather is optimistic about how things are going. We seem to be making about 8-10 miles per day through dense bush. Category:Session Logs